Followed By The Moonlight

Notes- This story was such a pain in the ass. I have no idea if I went over broad with the imagery or not. There might be a second part to this fic, it depends if my mind works with me.

When he first saw her, the light of the moon had bathed her in white and silver tears wet her face in sorrow.He had been searching, through the mud and cold screeching wind, for the animal he had stricken down by bow and arrow. The sun had descended and night had come, darkening the path he had made and turning the trees around him into images from a nightmare. The Prince knew continuing on would be a fruitless endeavor and began to turn, pushing broken branches to the side. He raised his sword, clean and freshly sharpened, to cut a new way home. That’s when something caught his eye.

It was a light that cut into the darkness which surrounded him and shined against the silver of his blade. It enticed him to stop in his actions and look, his eyes fighting against the dark to find the source.

And there…among the trees and bushes, the leaves and the branches, was a glow which shined on everything around it. And with it came the sound of weeping, high and sorrowful. It streamed through the air like the sweetest of melodies and tugged on his heart.

It compelled the Prince to move, his feet shifting by their own accord and moved his body towards the light. He walked with his mind only on the crying before him until he reached the arch way of trees the light peeked through. His hands reached between them and opened the entrance wide enough to let him through. And that’s when he saw her.

A girl?

No.

A nymph?

Can’t be.

A goddess?

Impossible.

An angel. A wingless, weeping angel.

She sat by a spring as she cried, her body hunched and shaking in the light of the full moon overhead. She was white—whiter than paper or snow or ivory—with hair which draped over her shoulders and fell in twin tails from the loose buns upon her head. Her being—in her harrowing sobbing which could crack even the hardest of war generals—seemed to be unreal and imaginary; something mythical to even all the religions of the world and then some.

Endymion stared, awe-struck, at her and took a step forward.

She moved. He stopped.

She looked up. He swore he saw the stars being born in those eyes.

The girl did not stop crying when she saw him and sniffed. Her cheeks and nose were bright red and dirty with her overwhelming tears as they dripped down and off her chin. If one thought her crying was terrible, then seeing her face twisted in sadness and pain could only be described as devastating.

In some sick way, Endymion thought she was the most beautiful thing.

She opened her month, swallowing down hiccups before she spoke, “H…help…”

The plea broke Endymion out of his delusion and he knitted his eyebrows in confusion. “Help?” He looked at her body and saw it. The blood which cascaded down her white dress and painted her arms red. He took another step towards her, his arm reaching out, “My Lady, are you hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No…” She sat up and turned fully towards him, allowing the Prince to see the duck she cradled in her arms.

His duck, that is.

The one he had shot down earlier, his arrow—black with blood—portraying through the creature’s neck. Its soulless eyes peered dimly up at the girls face as she drew her head down and cuddled it. She shushed at it as if it were her much loved child.

“My Lady…it is dead.” He said with some discretion.

The girl’s head snapped up, tears flying from her cheeks, and she glared at him. He backed away, as if burnt by the fire in her eyes. “I am no fool, sir!” She yelled at him, though her voice was still wet. She turned attention to the bird and her face fell once more, “A dying soul still deserves to be mourned and to be helped.” She kissed the top of the duck’s head and gently closed his eyes with her fingers.

She stood, then, on uneasy legs and walked towards him. A tiny, skinny thing compared to him, the girl held out the duck towards him until he took it from her. Endymion looked at her in question and she smiled back, “Please remove the arrow from him, sir. It will soothe his pain in the afterlife…”

He could have bothered to say something. He could have challenged her request with a logical ‘but it’s dead. It cannot feel!’ He could have dropped the animal and walked off back into the forest, leaving the strange, beautiful girl to his dreams and over active imagination. Yet, he did not. Instead, he dropped to his knees and did as he was told.

As the blood smeared against the brown of his tunic, Endymion snapped the head of the arrow off and slid both ends out of the animal. He threw the remains of the weapon unto the ground and stood again just as the girl bent over and ripped the end of her white dress off in a quick motion.

The Prince spattered at her uncovered thigh and turned his head the other way—because a lady did simply do such a thing in front of a man!—a fresh red flushing his cheeks. The girl did seem to notice or care; her attention focused instead on the duck, she took it back and gently wrapped it in the torn linen.

She hugged the creature to her chest as she walked off, her white hair flowing after her in waves. And Endymion watched her, mesmerized, as she dipped her feet into spring and plunged her entire lower half. Her hair and her dress floated about her waist and swam in the silent current of the water.

He saw her lips move, her eyes looking out off somewhere far, and speak in soft whispers that he could not understand. She smiled, another few tears dripped down her cheeks.

Then, carefully, with a look of great compassion, she placed the duck’s corpse into the water and slid her hands away. She glided backwards, the entirety of her being hugged by the light of the moon, and waved as the creature was slowly swallowed by the clear water.

Endymion stood at the foot of the spring while she got out, peering down at the body that drifted lower and lower to the bottom. “You are strange, my Lady.” He said with his vision still set on the moonlit spring.

The girl looked up; her hands still ringing out the ends of her wet hair, “Am I?” She asked curiously. Her was voice was just like her. Sweet. Small. Innocent.

He chuckled, “Yes. Not many girls would touch a dead animal, much less mourn over it.”

“Then human girls are cruel.”

She sounded bitter and…wait…human girls?

He felt her move before he saw her, only catching a flash of white in the corner of his eye. His brain caught up soon after, putting her words and actions into something that made sense. “Wa—“ He started, spinning so fast he may have lost his balance for a moment there. The girl was already passing through the place he had entered from and disappeared.

“Wait!” He called, following after her into the dark forest. Or what was supposed to be the dark. However, light had stream its way past the cluttered branches and leaves and formed a path for the girl, who still glowed with a pure light.

He managed to cut past a few nasty branches which tore at his cloak, wanting to pull him back and send him flying into the unknown. He tripped over things as he tried to keep up with her, cursing at all things that had to do with nature. The girl, on the other hand, did not seem to have such problems as she walked along, hopping over roots that blocked her way.

Endymion caught up with the traveling girl and, out of breath, he said “What you said did not make sense.”

“What didn’t?” she asked.

“The—ow—“ he stumbled over a root that stood off the ground, “The ‘human girl’ part.”

“What about it?”

“You—well—said it as if you were not one yourself.”

“Do I look like a human?” The girl stopped and stared up at him, her blue eyes wide with confusion. Her head cocked to the side and her pink lips pouted, waiting for an answer.

And what a silly question did she ask. Did she look human? Of course she did—not.

Endymion knew that the girl—who was followed by the moonlight as if it were her lover—could not have been human. She could not have been born upon Earth soil to a mortal mother and father. She was too unreal. Too strange.

Too beautiful.

Yet here she stood—flesh and blood and eyes that looked like the night sky above—asking him if she looked human. What a thing to ask of him.

The Prince looked at the pretty girl and shook his head. “Who are you?”

A Goddess? A Nymph? An Angel?

“I am Serenity.”

And she smiled.

And he knew she was something better than anything he could have thought of.